EP 88: Dave Made a Maze | It's a Trap! It's Also a Six Foot Tall Vagina.

Good morning!!!!

First - an apology for the quality of the recording. My bad. (technologically challenged)

This week Dave Made a Maze and we entered it. So did everyone else except the bum off the street who made a sandwich and had a cup of tea. Bless his heart. 

This is a strong recommendation from both of these bean flickers! There's more to a maze than it's cover.

Ok! Love you!!! Bye!!!!

Transcript

Bridget: 0:09

Good morning.

Wendy: 0:09

Good morning.

Bridget: 0:10

I'm Bridget and this is Wendy. And this is Flick and Beans. Thank you for the coffee. You're welcome. You must have got a new coffee maker.

Wendy: 0:19

I did.

Bridget: 0:20

And a new pretty pink chair.

Wendy: 0:23

I did, yeah.

Bridget: 0:24

I love it. Okay, so this week's movie was Dave Made a maze from 2017. Yeah, we saw it on Prime. And the gist of it is, Dave is an artist, tried so many different pursuits and he never finishes anything. His girlfriend Annie, comes home after a weekend away to find a cardboard fort in the middle of their apartment. Yes, it's.

Wendy: 0:54

And it's quite large. Like, it's taking up their whole apartment, basically. But it's even bigger than that.

Bridget: 1:00

Well, yes. Can we take this part? And he's like, no. And she shakes it. Don't do that. And then he says, I can't come out because I'm lost. And I get her reaction.

Wendy: 1:13

You're too stupid to find your way out of a cardboard box.

Bridget: 1:15

Exactly. So aside from it being a fort, there's literally some smoke billowing out. There are lights. It's so weird. And it comes down to, call Gordon, not Leonard, call Gordon. Basically, it snowballs into. There are so many people in the room. Yeah, don't come in here.

Wendy: 1:37

It's dangerous.

Bridget: 1:38

But they do. They do. The whole bunch of them. Leonard is the guy who. He's also an artist, but he's a filmmaker. So he's like, okay, I'm making a documentary. He's got a boom mic operator, he's got a cameraman, and he's the director. So throughout the movie, he's trying to get, like, interviews. He's telling them, okay, look more surprised.

Wendy: 2:05

It's an extra layer that makes a lot more comic relief. Yeah. So they go into the maze, and the maze is like Hermione's bag. Way larger and more complex inside than it looks on the outside. It's like his imagination takes off on its own and starts building it without him.

Bridget: 2:22

So the difference between a labyrinth and a maze, a maze just confronts you with a lot of dead ends. But a labyrinth, you move into the center and back out again. Usually it's a meditation walk, but it's also in Greek mythology with the Minotaur in a meditative labyrinth, there isn't a Minotaur, but yeah. So they all go in and they're stunned because it's is larger than it appears in. It's seemingly endless. They move through different rooms, and they're all made of cardboard in one way or another, with added elements such as the origami cranes, which are alive and.

Wendy: 3:11

Attacking them, she picks up an origami flower.

Bridget: 3:15

So, yeah, certain points she's amazed and mystified by his creation, his art.

Wendy: 3:23

Did you feel like they had good chemistry? I felt like they were a weird couple and maybe it was just that she was annoyed with him.

Bridget: 3:29

I think it's because he never finishes anything and he feels like he's letting her down all the time. There are several places inside the maze that show his love for her.

Wendy: 3:40

Yeah.

Bridget: 3:40

And it's all very, very cool. And there's the point where they all have to jump in a tube and slide down and they come out as cardboard puppets. Almost like those paper lunch bag puppets. Spoiler alert. The main characters are the only ones that get out.

Wendy: 3:59

Yes.

Bridget: 4:00

Some of the other people who entered the maze was the blondes. Then you have Bryn and her boyfriend, another guy who comes in late. And meanwhile there's a hobo off the street who didn't go in and is just enjoying a cup of tea. Tea and whatever's in the fridge.

Wendy: 4:20

There's also the Finnish tourist.

Bridget: 4:22

They were just sitting there having a picnic. This mythological type of labyrinth has hazards, booby traps. You have to navigate that and then defeat the big monster right away. The blonde gets killed in the worst.

Wendy: 4:39

Way possible by paper cut.

Bridget: 4:42

Cardboard sword cuts her neck instead of blood coming out. Is this my good yarn? The second person that died was Brynn's boyfriend. And Brynn also dies, but they encounter her later as a paper person tied up by her wrist. So Brynn is that person that you can only tolerate for a short period of time. All she said was, high five. Come over here. Hem. High five. High five. They try to get some documentary footage of her and ask her pointed questions, but she can only answer. So she's that one that just wants to hang out that you can't stand. And she is actually a part of the labyrinth and also speaks in a demonic voice.

Wendy: 5:33

Yeah, it's very reminiscent of an exorcism.

Bridget: 5:36

What about the idea that he's clearing all the garden garbage out of his brain? That's been holding him back because it's totally about the artist's process. Things can take on a life of their own. I. It resonates a lot with me because I've tried a hundred different crafts because I always have these big ideas.

Wendy: 5:57

I identify with that a lot.

Bridget: 5:59

He still hadn't finished it, but did finally create the coolest thing at the end, but with the help of his girlfriend, asking for support and collaborating and trusting and just being there for that other person. Did he just have a mental break? Yeah. It was all in his head. Because at the end, those dead people's bodies weren't there.

Wendy: 6:23

Right.

Bridget: 6:23

Maybe she hadn't even been home yet.

Wendy: 6:25

Yeah.

Bridget: 6:26

Reaching out to your friends for support, but also proving to them this thing, finally, that you can finish something and be proud of it and show it off and then destroy it because you don't need it anymore.

Wendy: 6:39

Right, Right. It is the making of the thing.

Bridget: 6:42

Yeah.

Wendy: 6:42

That's also like, once you put something out into the world, it, like, no longer becomes yours because now it's open to everybody else's perception of it. A fear, too, of a lot of artists, because you put all this heart and soul and blood and sweat and time into whatever you're making, and then you're vulnerable because once you release it, you can't control how people are going to interpret it or perceive it. That could be something that also stopping you from finishing.

Bridget: 7:09

Even if it was in his imagination, he finished it and he realized that he had to push to finish it, to dig deep, to explore his mind. And it was so creative.

Wendy: 7:22

I think that building this set would have been so fun. I love working with paper. Cutting stuff is really satisfying. Cutting paper and probably cut lots of paper cuts, but.

Bridget: 7:31

Right.

Wendy: 7:31

Have you ever cut your hand on a cardboard box? It's like the worst.

Bridget: 7:34

Oh, each room was so different. So anyone who's thinking of watching this movie, A, you need to. And B, it's not just a cardboard fort. There are so many elements, and it's so fun to look at. And it's such a journey. We do see, oddly, that Dave has a glove on his hand. Big old skiing glove. But we find out how he got it. There's a throbbing v***** that is human tall.

Wendy: 8:08

Yeah.

Bridget: 8:09

Of course. All the men are absolutely mesmerized.

Wendy: 8:14

Yeah. They can't stop staring at it. It's like hypnotizing.

Bridget: 8:17

Right. It's like those spirals in your eyes happen.

Wendy: 8:21

Yeah. Yeah. V***** was kind of moving in and out in a trancey way, too.

Bridget: 8:25

Yes. Right. It's a trap.

Wendy: 8:27

Yeah.

Bridget: 8:28

What's your take on the symbolism of when it's finally over and he still has the cardboard hand?

Wendy: 8:35

I think maybe just evidence they've taken that experience with them that he's changed.

Bridget: 8:40

Ooh, that's nice. I have a second layer to that.

Wendy: 8:43

Yeah.

Bridget: 8:44

Maybe it's a dirty layer. Maybe it's a symbol of the renewed closeness that he feels with his girlfriend. Sticking your hand In a giant v***** that bites you. I think you're right. That's a really good takeaway. It stuck with him. And it also reinforces the idea that it wasn't real. It's gory in a fun way because there's no blood.

Wendy: 9:10

No.

Bridget: 9:10

It is like yarn confetti, crepe paper. Like silly string in your hair.

Wendy: 9:16

Yeah. What was your favorite room? I did really like the piano room, where it starts like a small piano, then comes in. It's a large piano, and they could walk in and out of it.

Bridget: 9:25

Keys. My favorite room was the one with the cardboard table and chairs and everything was an optical illusion. It's like a giant teacup on a table that is flat. It looked like a picture on the wall, but you walked toward it and it was flat. I like that kind of stuff. I liked the room with the hanging silks and the colorful lights.

Wendy: 9:51

Yeah.

Bridget: 9:52

And Annie says it's beautiful. She sees it. I think it's a metaphor for how hard he's trying. Did we talk about at the end, after they've thrown it into the dumpster, the minotaur and the origami bird step out, start walking down the street. The minotaur had a hot man's body but a huge cardboard minotaur head. I think the dialogue was extremely realistic. Talking to himself in his head. People could watch this in two different ways. One, it's just a fun fantasy. Two, it goes deeper psychologically.

Wendy: 10:32

They go into all of his relationships with these people too. Through the maze. So you get an idea of, like, what their relationship is like through the maze.

Bridget: 10:42

Not just the girlfriend and the ones that survived. Quote, Annie, Dave and Gordon. Boom. Mike Guy and Leonard did survive, and they leaked the apartment pretty much right away. The sound guy was so great in the way he was disheveled. Leonard tells him, go ahead and notify the families of everybody who died.

Wendy: 11:04

Oh, right.

Bridget: 11:06

And that was the end of their involvement. But those three picking up the pieces and going to the dumpster with them, he realizes, are his closest friends. It was such a ride.

Wendy: 11:20

It's pretty wild.

Bridget: 11:21

I think the dialogue was kind of perfect. I would have almost thought, oh, this is a cute comedy. And not delved into the deeper level. If they had bantered, like on Friends, I felt like this was really real and almost like a student film very much.

Wendy: 11:38

Yeah.

Bridget: 11:38

Also because the filmmaker, they come upon one of his films. That is absolutely terrible.

Wendy: 11:44

Yeah.

Bridget: 11:45

You know, so he's a failure, too. Failure is the wrong word now.

Wendy: 11:49

Failure is good. You just got to keep failing until.

Bridget: 11:52

You know, I think it's the trying and the follow through. Definitely worth watching. I loved it. I'll watch it again and again, especially with this kind of, you know, since we've kind of talked about the deeper part of it.

Wendy: 12:08

Yeah. I think it did a good job of walking the line between, like, being deep and arty but not being pretentious. It didn't really get too pretentious. You get that. They're kind of poking fun at that.

Bridget: 12:18

All right. Did we do it?

Wendy: 12:19

I think we did it.

Bridget: 12:20

We flicked some beads.

Wendy: 12:22

Okay, Love you. Bye.

Bridget: 12:24

Bye. Party all night long.